OT: A modest reward at the end of a long, hot day...

It was a long, hot day last Thursday. I'd driven from Austin to San Antonio to attend a real estate closing that was cancelled at the last minute. I was literally within site of the title company when I got the call telling me they needed to re-schedule. I had no other pressing business in San Antonio so I headed back home.

There were a few traffic delays on the way back and it took longer than usual. The trip sapped my will to get anything else constructive done that day so I puttered around the office, answered some mail and paid bills. When I walked into the house a bit after six in the evening I was tired, frustrated and a worn out from the stress and the delay of the big transaction.

I looked in the fridge and saw that one of my friends had left me a couple bottles of Real Ale Brewing Company's beers. There were labelled, "The Devil's Backbone." I'm not really much of a beer drinker but the idea of a frosty, unfiltered, Belgian style ale seemed alluring so I popped the cap off one and poured it into a large glass.

I walked into our living room and put the glass down on our old, weathered coffee table, in front of the couch. By chance I'd put the glass down in exactly the right spot to encourage late afternoon/early evening sunlight to toss some magic toward through the glass and the beer.

When I glanced over and looked my first thought was not to drink the beer but to grab a camera and photograph it before the light faded altogether and the head on the beer crumbled into a visual mess.

On a nearby counter I found a Nikon D700 and an ancient, manual focusing 55mm f3.5 Micro Nikkor lens. I shot five frames and then the light was gone. The beer tasted good too. Wish I'd taken the TV remote out of the frame before shooting. Ah well. Next time.

The Real Brew is in Blanco, Texas. My halfway point between San Antonio and Austin, when I go "the back way." I've never been to the brewery but I'm planning to get there as soon as the weather cools off just a bit ----maybe in December. I love their products; especially the taste of their "Fireman's Four." It's a pale ale popular all over Austin. Sadly for many of you The Real Ale Brewing Company does not sell their products outside the state of Texas....

Radically hot Summer.

Barton Springs Pool. 

I shot this image of a lifeguard at Barton Springs Pool a few Summers back. I was walking around that day with a very special camera; it was the Sony R1. An all-in-one camera that had an APS-C size sensor and a pretty darn great 24-120mm (35mm equivalent) Carl Zeiss zoom lens on the front. It wasn't particularly small but it wasn't a heavy camera. I got the most amazing shots with it. The color and contrast was pretty much always on the money. The wide end of the lens was well enough corrected to allow me to use it for some brochure projects in which we photographed buildings and interior architecture. 

On the day I shot this it was smoking hot outside. I took the Sony R1 along with me on this adventure because I didn't need to bring along anything else. No attachments, no battery grips, no extra lenses and no extra batteries. Just a camera that was easy to operate and even had its own very usable EVF. When you work in the heat it's great to distill down the details to the fewest possible. Making fewer and fewer decisions is a great coping mechanism for dealing with heat.

Yesterday was a record setter for that particular date in July, in Austin, Texas. The temperature was 110 degrees and, with the humidity added in, the heat index was more like 115. Of course, that would be the day that the title company in San Antonio would want to schedule the final closing on my parent's house! The closing was scheduled for 2:30 pm and I didn't relish flogging my own car (yet again) through the tire shredding heat, nor did I look forward to the inevitable full stop traffic jams on the dreaded IH-35 highway. Really, who wants to sit at a dead stop on a blistering blacktop on a 110 degree afternoon, waiting for the coolant in their radiator to boil out? But since I had to execute the contract as power of attorney (or attorney in fact) I was more than ready to get the process over with, in spite of the heat.

In a flash of genius (they come few and far between...) I decided to rent a car for the trip down and back in the heat. On Sunday I picked up a white Buick LaCrosse from Avis car rental. It was as close to brand new as I've ever had from a rental agency, with only 4,000 miles on it. The car reminded me of the kinds of cars we got to drive in the 1970s. Big and heavy, smooth on the highway and fast. And I'll have to say after owning a number of BMWs and Hondas, GM knows better re: how to do air conditioning for Texans. You could keep a six pack of beer cold enough just by sticking it in front of the vents....

The car was fun and the traffic was surprisingly moderate. We closed on the house with no glitches and then I headed back up to Austin at 3:15 in the afternoon. I chose to go the back way, across the "Devil's Backbone" on Hwy. 281. I cut across my favorite "lonely" rural highway, #165 and saw few cars and no big trucks. When the temperature on the car thermometer hit 114 degrees (f) I started watching the radiator temp and then oil temp a little closer. I sure didn't want to have a breakdown five miles from the nearest ranch house...

Everything went like clockwork and I got back home around 5pm, just in time for Austin's legendary rush hour traffic. But since I was heading into town instead of out of town even that wasn't bad. I took a camera with me on the trip but the heat convinced me never to stop and click off a shot.

With the sale of the house behind me I finally (for the first time this year) feel like I can devote some real attention to resuscitating my own photography and videography business. I'm excited by the prospect.

We had a cold front blow in late last night. It should only hit 100 today!!! Break out the sweaters!!!

I hope everyone is coping with the Summer heat load well. Only three more months of Summer to go here in Austin and then we'll settle down and get our two weeks of Autumn. Brrrrrrr.

Now is the time to swim.